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What you can do with slow shutter speed…

Here are the things I’ve learned from experimenting and having an ADORAMA TV marathon in youtube.

Adorama TV, hosted by Mark Wallace is a one on one video tutorial of Digital Photography techniques. Yesterday and awhile ago, I gladly applied what I’ve learned about slowing the shutter speed from the tutorials Mark Wallace provided.

In my camera, I placed the setting at Shutter Speed Priority mode (S), so it can make the adjustments for me while I change the shutter speed.

1. Panning – is a great technique in sports to demonstrate dynamic motion. This is achieved by setting the camera at shutter Speed priority mode, setting it to continuous/burst shots and AF-C mode. Then when you shoot, you have to follow your subject that’s moving from left to right or the other way around. If you get the shutter speed right to match with the speed of the motion, you will have a crisp shartp focused subject and blurred background.

My Attempts:

Practicing panning with my fingers

2. Zoom Effect- To achieve this effect what you do is zoom out on your subject while you release the shutter.

3. Turning Night into Day

4. Letting Little Light Stand out

I shot this one in a very dark room with only the cell phone light as the only light source. With very slow shutter speed, the little light from the cell phone stands out that it even illuminates the face of my subject amply.

In the picture above, I had to tell my subject to stay very still while I’m exposing him for 10 seconds.

Here is a self-portrait of me with the light from a candle the only thing that’s lighting the room. I exposed myself for 15 seconds and tried not to make little movements in order to get a still shot.

Note: to get pleasant and crisp shots, subject (aside from the little light source) must stay very, very, very still.

5. Light Painting- One of my favorite techniques of using slow shutter speed.

Shutter Speed @ 15s, light source: candle

I searched for a flashlight everywhere but found that our house doesn’t have one. We only have candles in case of emergency. So I made use of candles instead and got this:

When I enlisted the help of little ‘annoying’ children staying temporarily at home as guests (since their mom is a good friend of my mom), I was provided with a flashlight. They borrowed their father’s cell phone

light painting using flash. Epic fail with my face looking such a drag.

light painting without flash. (for this image, shutter speed is 20s).

The lights are more like laser lines than dots. This is probably how slower shutter speed differs from that of a little bit faster one.

6. City Lights– I’ve always wanted to take a street shot after sundown and get those interesting line effects due to the car’s lights. I even had a poor attempt at it some time ago when I wasn’t bold enough to get a good angle and I didn’t have a tripod. Tonight, I had my mom stopped over and parked in front of UC-Banilad while I climbed up at the sky walk that connects UC to Countrymall to take these shots: (if you encounter s10, or s20 or s15, don’t get confuse, That’s the shutter speed.)

If there wasn’t any traffic, I would probably get straighter lines. 😀

I asked Jiboy to model for me, so I would know how the picture would look like if I wanted to have a focused subject. To achieve this, my subject should not move until the shutter is done capturing everything, and of course, flash should be used.

Serendipity shot

Why is Jiboy transparent in this one? That’s because he moved away when he should’ve stayed still. This shot is a serendipity. Jiboy’s transparency makes this photo quite artistic even if his movement was by accident.

I’m planning to do this again another time. Maybe, next time, I’d situate myself on another sky walk just near Banilad Elem School, which will give me a view of the cars passing over the flyover.

What I haven’t done yet with Slow Shutter Speed is take a picture of the sunset, sunrise or twilight. I can’t get the timing. I also haven’t tried it on cascading waters and beautiful landscapes. Gotta try that next time, too.

Today was a very fruitful day for me. I got to fulfill my desire of getting city light shots in the evening and I also got to cover a wedding celebration. Since it’s getting late and I’m tired from my very long (but very productive day), I’m going to blog about my first wedding gig tomorrow. Stay tune.